This season of "Scandal" has been reduced to 18 episodes. Not because it's not doing well (it's actually one of the top shows on television). It's reportedly because Kerry Washington, the star, can no longer conceal her "secret" real life pregnancy while filming.

Deets inside...

Gladiators are being shorted 4 episodes of "Scandal" this season. And it's not because ABC won't order the full 22 episodes. According to reports, it's Kerry Washington who is the cause of the shortened season.

Kerry's character Olivia Pope is not pregnant, and it seems creator Shonda Rhimes has no intent of sending the story in that direction. So reports state Kerry is running out of ways to conceal a pregnancy the world already knows about. Deadline reports:

The network has reduced the order for the hot Shonda Rhimes drama from 22 to 18 episodes. The network wouldn’t give a reason for the cutback but, of course, it is not because ABC doesn’t want a full season of Scandal — it would gladly take 40 episodes a season from its new flagship drama series if it could. But Scandal star Kerry Washington is pregnant, and it’s getting hard to hide the pregnancy in loose-fitting clothes for the normally super stylish and elegant Olivia Pope — and it’s hard to reduce Washington’s workload as Pope is the show and in most scenes.

Really though? The secrecy level has now reached a breaking point when you start cutting us out of our damn episodes Kerry!

And since her 'Olivia' character is not pregnant, it's not impossible to conceal a real life pregnancy in clothes and creative camera angels, like plenty of actresses have done before when their characters weren't pregnant.

So what is the problem?

Kerry has been overwhelmingly secretive about her marriage and her pregnancy to the point where she hasn't even acknowledged her husband Nnamdi by name. She's barely outright confirmed from her own mouth she's married. She hasn't even been seen with her husband. But, we've let all that slide. Because as long as she keeps up her Olivia Pope fabulousness, we say, "Do you boo."

It's one thing to go out of your way to hide a pregnancy by not acknowledging it in any way. We haven't criticized her for it. But when you start cutting into our "Scandal" life to cover up something we already know about, now we have a problem.

We're sure someone can find a way to strategically hide your pregnancy for a few more episodes (assuming health is not an issue since that is not what was said in the report--if health IS the issue, we fully understand the episodes being cut). Feel free to call up Claire Danes from "Homeland" (she filmed strenuous scenes for her non-pregnant character overseas LAST season while several months pregnant and no one could tell) or any of the soap operas since they do this all the time.

This pregnancy is the worst kept secret in Hollywood. We're just saying...we already know boo.